The Reason and the Result 

—OF— 

Civil Service Reform 

AN ADDRESS 


DELIVERED BEFORE 


.The National Civil-Service Reform Leagde 

AT ITS ANNUAL MEETING HELD MAY 29, 1888 


-BY— 


HON. GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 


NEW YORK: 

PUBLISHED FOR THE 

NATIONAL CIVIL-SERVICE REFORM LEAGUE 

1888. 
















:F^xxlolioa.tloxx3 ol" 

The National Civil-Service Reform League. 


Proceedings at the Annual Meeting of the National Civil-Service 
Reform League, 1882, with address by (ieorge William Curtis. 
Per copy, lo cts. 


The same for 1884. 

Per copy, 10 cts. 

Per 

100, 

$7 

50 

The same for 1885. 

Per copy, 10 cts. 

Per 

too. 

$7 

50 

The same for 1886. 

Per copy, 8 cts. 

Per 

100, 

$5 

00 

The same for 1887. 

Per copy, 8 cts. 

Per 

100, 

$5 

00 

The same for 1888. 

Per copy, 12 cts. 

Per 100, 

$10 

00 


The Year’s Work in Civil-Service Reform. (Address of 1884.) By 
George William Curtis. Per copy, 3 cts. Per 100, . $2 50 

Civil-Service Reform under the present National Administration. 
(Address of 1885.) By George William Curtis. Per copy, 3 cts. 
Per 100, ..$2 50 

The Situation. (Address of 1886.) By George William Curtis. Per 
copy, 3 cts. Per too ....... 2 50 

Address to the Voters of the United States. By George William 
Curtis. Per copy, 1 ct. Per 100,.^75 cts. 

The Selection of Laborers. By James M. Bugbee of the Mass. C. 
S. Commission. Per copy, 2 cts. Per too, . ‘ . . $i 25 

The same in German. Per copy, 2 cts. I’er 100 . . . $i 25 

Report of the Special Committee on the present Condition of 
the Reform Movement, March 16 , 1887 . Per copy, 8 cts 
Per 100,.$5-00 

Address to the Clergy of all denominations. 

Constitution of the National Civil-Service Reform League. 

Also a few copies of some early publications. 

PUBLICATIONS OF THE NEW YORK CIVIL-SERVICE 
REFORM ASSOCIATION. 

II. The Beginning of the Spoils System in the National Gov¬ 
ernment, 1829-30. (Reprinted, by permission, from Barton’s 
“Life of Andrew Jackson.”) Per copy, 5 cts. Per 100, $3 00 

III. The Spoils System and Civil-Service Reform in the Custom- 

House and Post-Office at New York. By Uorman B. Eaton. 
136 pages, 8vo. Per copy, 15 cts. Per too, . . $10 00 

IV. Civil-Service Reform in the New York Custom-House. By 

Willard Brown. Per copy, 5 cts. Per 100, . . . $3 00 

V. Term and Tenure of Office. By Dorman B. Eaton. Per copy, 25 cts. 
Second edition, abridged. Per copy, 15 cts Per 100 , . $10 00 

VII. The Danger of an Office-Holding Aristocracy. By E. L. 
Godkin. Per copy, 5 cts. Per 100, . . . $3 00 




The Reason and the Result 


—OF— 


Civil Service Reform 


AN ADDRESS 


DELIVERED BEFORE 


The National Civil-Service Reform Leagoe 


AT ITS ANNUAL MEETING HELD MAY 29, 1888 


—BY— 


HON. GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 


I) 

-. A 


4 . 

iviA.aois/o 




NEW YORK: 

PUBLISHED FOR THE 
NATIONAL CIVIL-SERVICE REFORM LEAGUE 

1888 . 


1 




t'lA- 


PRESS OF 

WILLIAM S. GOTTSBERGER 

II MURRAY STREET, N. Y. 


THE REASON AND THE RESULT 


-OF- 

CIVIL-SERVICE REFORM. 


Thirty-six years ago when Franklin Pierce was elected Presi¬ 
dent the happy end of the anti-slavery agitation was announced. 
But ten years after the election of Pierce, Abraham Lincoln issued 
the proclamation of emancipation. The course of American his¬ 
tory does not depend upon Presidents but upon the people. Of 
that fact even the managers of nominating conventions are aware, 
and therefore, although they detest Civil Service reform and insist 
that it is extinct, I venture to predict that one of the great conven¬ 
tions which will soon assemble, will praise the President for his 
fidelity to reform and the other will denounce him as the chief of 
sinners against it, — each party assuming not that reform is dead, 
but what is perfectly true, that it is more alive than ever before. 
Party platforms are valuable not so much for what they say as for 
what they indicate. They are rag bags of an extraordinary as¬ 
sortment of pieces, but they are all of the texture and the colors 
which are believed to be popular. They would make a most 
crazy quilt, but they are an excellent guide to the political fashion 
because they are selected by very shrewd judges. 

I think that nobody is more interested than we are to know the 
exact situation of the reform movement or to state it more accu¬ 
rately. Last year we told what we believed to be the truth of the 









4 


present administration, in regard to reform, as we have always 
sought to tell the truth of every administration and we were assured 
that our meeting was like a funeral feast. But we could safely reply 
that if the remark were true, then, in the familiar phrase, it was cer¬ 
tainly not our funeral. Undoubtedly more had been expected of 
this administration than of any of its predecessors because of the fre¬ 
quent and friendly declarations of the President, and because his 
election by the votes of those who were not of his party authorized 
an independence of action which a President elected solely by the 
vote of his party might feel to be denied to him. This anticipation 
has been largely disappointed, but the disappointment must not 
make us unjust or unmindful of the fact that although the President 
has done much and has permitted much that every friend of reform 
must deplore, yet he has maintained all that had been gained in 
the examinations, he has extended the range of the classified ser¬ 
vice, and he has revised and strengthened the rules. Certainly 
this is not all that had been expected, but the general and intelli¬ 
gent public regret that he has done no more shows how strong is 
the desire of reform in the public mind. 

That is the essential question in all reform movements. 
They are at first addressed to public opinion, and parties and ad¬ 
ministrations very slowly respond. But this slow response must 
not deceive us. In 1852 the Whig party, dodging the slavery 
question, cast 1,400,000 votes, and the anti-slavery party only 
155,000. But four years later the Whig artful dodger had disap¬ 
peared, and the anti-slavery sentiment, organized as the Republi¬ 
can party, cast more than 1,300,000 votes. Twenty years ago 
when Mr. Jenckes, of Rhode Island, spoke here in New York to 
a few persons in the chapel of the University upon reform in the 


s 


Civil Service he was like Paul in Athens declaring the unknown 
God. To-day there has been for six years a law of Congress em¬ 
bodying his views. In the White House there is a President, 
elected because he held those views. The press of the opposition 
party assails him chiefly for abandoning them, and an opposition 
Committee of the Senate is accumulating evidence to prove if it 
can that he has done even less for reform than other Presidents, 
and therefore ought not to be re-elected. This is hardly conso¬ 
nant with the theory of the death and burial of reform. Party in¬ 
vestigating committees on the eve of elections do not trouble 
themselves with spent rockets. In observing the movement of 
public opinion against public abuses we need not be troubled be¬ 
cause it is not uniform or universal, nor because results do not 
keep equal pace with eager hopes. It is not until the axe has 
made many and deep gashes in the trunk that the tree begins to 
yield. Long after the blows that will level it have begun it 
towers unshaken in its pride of place. Nevertheless, it is 
doomed. The stroke of the axe is strong and steady, ringing 
with cheerful music, and at last the towering tree is laid 
low. 

The history of English liberty is the story of the restraint and 
regulation of patronage. When the revolution of 1688 had 
expelled the Stuarts and was supposed to have substituted 
Parliament for the prerogative, the House of Hanover sought 
instinctively to recover the complete prerogative by subduing 
Parliament, and its most powerful weapon was patronage. Its 
corruption was universal. Political freedom was in mortal peril. 
To be one of the king’s friends was to be an enemy of English 
liberty, and Lord Chatham thanked God when he heard that 


6 


America had resisted in arms because he knew that English 
liberty was to be saved, as it was saved, in America. 

This disgraceful and humiliating story has an unpleasantly 
familiar sound. Read upon the English page, we pity the 
subjects of a monarchy where such things were possible. We 
wonder that an intelligent people did not rise in wrath and sweep 
them away, and we complacently find in them admirable argu¬ 
ments for republican government. But, unhappily, while we read 
and wonder, and cry shame, we are looking in a mirror. It is 
ourselves we are flouting and scorning. “ My dear sir,” says 
Thackeray, “ I remark your virtuous indignation with snobbery. 
Very good; you are the snob whom I am describing.” There is 
no more ignominious chapter in the history of the English speak¬ 
ing race than tliat of the struggle of George the Third to withstand 
the progress of liberty by the power of patronage. But we are 
fast coming to see in this country that for sixty years we have 
been busily writing a different chapter of the same disgrace. 
One New York politician writes to another from Washington on 
the 17th of March, 1829, only a fortnight after the inauguration 
of General Jackson: “From the manner in which the President 
has exercised his power thus far I am inclined to think that he 
will go the whole hog.” The sagacious observer was not disap¬ 
pointed. The swinish saturnalia had begun and it proceeded with 
rapidly swelling fury. We need not waste our wonder, or satire, 
or contemptuous scorn, upon England and George the Third. 
Of this shame at least England has purged herself, while there are 
recreant Americans who boast of it as practical politics and who 
are actually proud of it in its worst form as peculiarly American. 

In the modest beginning of our government there was the 


7 


gravest apprehension of the danger lurking in patronage. In 
creating a new civil service it was feared that the control of its 
patronage together with the command of the army and navy and 
the state militia, would invest the President with authority to 
secure the prolongation of his own powers and even the per¬ 
petuity of the Presidency in his family. This apprehension 
reveals an instinctively wise forecast. The danger was there, but 
its precise form was not accurately foreseen. Soon, however, it 
appeared; gradually the sovereignty of party was substituted for 
that of the king, and it was sought to be maintained by the king’s 
old weapon of patronage. Before the Constitution was adopted 
by the necessary number of states, and before Washington had 
consented to accept a nomination for the Presidency, the pressure 
for place began with such force that he rebuked the indecent ur¬ 
gency. Yet the whole number of employees in the civil service 
during his administration Washington describes as “ a handfull,” 
and the revenue with which the government had to deal was but 
$2,000,000. Nevertheless the pressure was enormous and fore¬ 
cast the vast and deadly power of patronage and the desperate 
struggle for its control. 

But the only consideration which Washington entertained 
even in the chief appointments of his administration was fidelity to 
the new constitution and government. Proscribing no one for 
political reasons, removing no one except for misconduct or 
incapacity, he exercised the power of appointment solely in the 
public interest, and neither for partisan advantage nor personal 
aggrandizement. During his administration parties were or¬ 
ganized and when Hamilton and Jefferson were party leaders, 
party spirit, we may be sure, was not less fierce than now. But 


8 


Washington, neither an idealist nor a sentimentalist, but the most 
practical of statesmen, resolutely withstood its evil counsels, and 
in all that concerns the Civil Service an American President 
could have no better exemplar than Washington. 

With the inauguration of Jefferson the determined assault of 
party to control the national patronage began. By his fantastic 
theory of equitable distribution of patronage between the parties 
Jefferson drew out the bolts and then held the flood-gates by 
main force. It was obviously a mere question of time when the 
pressure would be mighty enough to sweep every barrier away. 
Jefferson had surrendered the cardinal principle that the great 
system of minor ministerial non-political places are not party 
prizes, but public trusts to which fitneSs alone is the only valid 
claim, and from which dismissal for the mere purpose of reward¬ 
ing partisans is a public wrong. The contempt of this principle 
which already ran riot in the two great States of New York and 
Pennsylvania, and which was one of the worst excesses of party 
spirit, would not be likely to relinquish its assaults upon the 
national government when the government itself conceded that 
half its demand was just. 

John Quincy Adams, worthy son of a worthy sire, interposed 
the final obstruction to the rising deluge. Among all our Presi¬ 
dents none was more courageous, more admirably equipped, or 
more sternly upright. The disdainful independence with which 
he commended the official efficiency of his Postmaster-General 
McLean while his Postmaster-General McLean was using the 
patronage of his office to defeat his chief, was worthy of the 
Roman Cato. His superb scorn of crawling politics makes the 
page of our annals upon which it is recorded a moral tonic. It 


9 


was very magnificent, we are told, but it was not politics. That 
depends upon the point of view. It was not the politics of Aaron 
Burr, but it was the politics of Washington. Had Adams prosti¬ 
tuted the executive patronage to his own personal advantage he 
might have gained a second term of the Presidency, but he would 
have forfeited his self-respect and have lost the noble renown 
which invests his name. 

It was by General Jackson, forty years after the Government 
was established, that the spoils revolution was accomplished, and 
the transfer of the power of patronage from the King to a party 
was completed. During its progress it had been opposed in 
speeclies, reports, earnest protests, solemn warnings and proposed 
acts of legislation, but nothing could withstand it. Ten years 
after Jackson’s election reform was the Whig cry. But it was 
only a cry. The tiger of party had tasted blood. There was no 
Whig purpose or policy of reform. The hard cider campaign of 
1840 was a laughing and singing political picnic. Exhausted with 
the panic of 1857 the country wanted change and called it reform, 
and as James the Second was said to have been sung out of the 
three kingdoms by the song of Lilliburlero, Van Buren was sung 
out of the Presidency by a mighty chorus of “ Tippecanoe and. 
Tyler too.” 

General Harrison alone took the campaign seriously. He 
pledged himself, as he said, “ before the world ” that if elected 
President he would use all his power and influence to abridge the 
power of the national executive, and to that end he again pledged 
himself “ before heaven and earth ” if elected President not to 
seek another term. He was elected, and Mr. Webster as Secretary 
of State wrote the warning circular to office-holders, which was 


lO 


read with universal incredulity, and was as little heeded by office¬ 
holders or enforced by the executive as subsequent circulars of the 
same kind. The Whigs out-Jacksoned Jackson. When business 
was prostrate and the country discontented with the administra¬ 
tion, reform was a convenient cry to turn the revenues of patron¬ 
age from Democratic to Whig pockets. But if any Whig had 
suggested in the Harrison Convention of 1840 that the party did 
not mean a complete change of the Civil Service an overwhelm¬ 
ing host of Flanagans would have shouted with honest amaze¬ 
ment, “what are we here for?” and the summary sweep that fol¬ 
lowed Harrison’s inauguration would have answered. 

From that time until recently party has prostituted the 
power of patronage as ruthlessly, as arbitrarily, as selfishly, as 
dangerously to liberty and the public welfare, as it was prostituted 
by the Hanoverian kings. The public service ceased to be 
regarded as a public trust, and had become party spoils and when 
Mr. Jenckes raised the first battle cry of civil service reform in the 
sense in which it is demanded by this League, the abuse was appar¬ 
ently impregnable in tradition, in conviction, in the strongest pas¬ 
sion and the most venal interest. It was held that the whole civil 
service in every degree, political and non-political, indiscriminately 
from the English Embassy to the scrubbing of floors and carrying 
coal in the public offices was the mere perquisite of the successful 
party. In 1848 Mr. Buchanan, then Democratic Secretary of State, 
declared in a public speech that if General Taylor did not proscribe 
his opponents he would prove faithless to his party. And long 
afterwards a Republican Secretary of the Treasury told me that 
when the country changed the party of administration it meant to 
change not only the Secretary of the ITeasury but the messenger 
at the door of his office. 


II 


Surely it is an immense advance of the reform sentiment and 
another signal illustration of the wholesome state of the public 
mind that last week a Democratic Secretary of the Treasury said 
in a public speech: “ But 1 hope to live to see the day when the 
great majority of the public offices shall be non-political, that is, 
when it shall not be considered needful to party government and 
party responsibility that many changes should be made in the 
purely administrative offices. There are many difficulties in the 
way of this that only time and public opinion can remove; but I 
believe that from the necessities of the case they will be removed. 
My own wish that as few public offices as possible should be in 
political category is based not alone or chiefly on the hope or the 
belief that the conduct of the public business will be improved 
thereby, but because I believe that a grave cause of party weak¬ 
ness and demoralization will be removed and that thereby the 
public will greatly gain.” If party exigencies and interests on the 
eve of a Presidential nomination make the obstructions and diffi¬ 
culties seem very much more insurmountable to the Secretary than 
to us, yet the fact of such a declaration from such an officer and 
gentleman, is one of the most hopeful signs of the times. 

Under the system which has so long subjugated the country, 
the newly-elected President, compelled by the demands of his 
party to turn out the great body of public officers, agents and em¬ 
ployees, and necessarily ignorant of proper persons to appoint in 
every part of a Continental Republic, depends for information 
upon Senators and Representatives, upon whom also the success 
of his administration depends. The executive and legislative 
authority carefully separated by the Constitution, become danger¬ 
ously confused. Representatives demand the patronage of their 


12 


districts and Senators practically usurp the power of nomination. 
From the executive and legislative commerce in places arises a 
huge office-holding hierarchy ascending in regular gradation from 
the lowest employees to the liighest officer, each dependent upon 
the other and all united in a common purpose to control general 
and local politics for their personal advantage. An organized 
political class independent of the great body of the people practi¬ 
cally absorbs the authority of the people. By mercenary control 
of caucuses and conventions they nominate candidates and require 
implicit obedience to their will as the condition of political prefer¬ 
ment.' By assessing the salaries of their subordinates the leaders 
of this class levy a tax upon the public treasury for their own 
benefit and that of a party. The voters of the party submit 
to their sway because refusal seems to mean the success of the op¬ 
position. Party ceases to be a voluntary union to shape public 
policy and becomes a faction to promote private gain and gratify 
personal ambition. Politics degenerate into mere place-hunting 
and venal jobbery. Self-respecting men withdraw more and 
more from public life. Honorable ambition disappears. Bosses 
replace statesmen. The young American is taught that the quali¬ 
fications for public service are not integrity, intelligence and in¬ 
dustry, but sycophancy and servility, cheating and bribing, and 
every kind of disorderly violence and unmanly trickery. He 
must be a parasite or a ruffian instead of a man. In such a situ¬ 
ation loss of self-respect becomes the condition of public employ¬ 
ment. The evil system multiplies enormously unnecessary places. 
It stimulates reckless extravagance in public expenditure. It con¬ 
trols the vast contracts of the government. It transforms the high¬ 
est officers of administration into brokers of petty place. It subsi- 



3 


dizes the press, defiles the American name, debauches the national 
character, until under its degrading mastery the power of the 
people passes into the hands of a venal oligarchy, and a Presiden¬ 
tial election ceases to be a contest of differing policies determined 
by free argument before the people, and becomes a ferocious and 
desperate struggle for the emoluments of place. 

This was our indictment against the evil system when we or-'^ 
ganized the League seven years ago. It was written upon the 
consciousness of every American citizen familiar with practical 
politics. It is written there still. Undoubtedly the systematic 
suppression of the right of suffrage in some states and organized 
frauds at the polls in others are wrongs affecting the whole 
union, which cannot be safely neglected. Reduction of the 
surplus and a just scheme of tariff taxation, like every question 
of taxation and finance, demand prompt attention. But a 
system of administration which perverts the entire civil service 
to the destruction of the true function of party, which makes the 
loss of self-respect the condition of public employment, which de¬ 
bauches politics and degrades the national character, seems to me ^ 
as vital a question as can be proposed to the country. I can 
imagine the question of suffrage left to the states, and, relieved 
from external pressure, gradually and wisely solved. It is con¬ 
ceivable that the vigorous enterprise and marvelous prosperity of 
the country might endure indefinitely even an unjust and exorbi¬ 
tant tariff. But it is not conceivable that the executive patronage 
can increase in the ratio of the growth of the last few years, 
unregulated and unrestrained, without the gravest peril to the 
government. 

The great service of the Leaguej hitherto, lies in arousing the 


14 


public mind, in creating a powerful public opinion, and in stimu¬ 
lating practical measures of reform. We have procured the pas¬ 
sage of wise and comprehensive reform laws. We have proved 
the entire practicability of the selection of the great host of subordi¬ 
nate officers and employes by tests of fitness instead of personal 
favor and political interest. We have made the political abuse of 
patronage odious in the public mind. We have stigmatized 
the system of political assessments, driven it into shameful con¬ 
cealment, and greatly reduced its ravages. We have carried up 
to the Supreme Court of the United States the question of the 
constitutionality of the law forbidding such assessments, and we 
have secured an opinion in its favor. We have raised in a state 
court the question, fortified by precedent, whether the fundamental 
principles of this reform are not parts of the common law regula¬ 
tion of all offices of trust. We have exposed the outrage of office¬ 
holding interference in caucuses and elections, and while it is not 
remedied, it is discredited, denounced, and greatly diminished. 
We have taught public officers who engage in active party politics 
that they are closely watched, and if not rebuked by tlie execu¬ 
tive, they are censured by sound public sentiment. We have 
compelled public explanations of wrongs which were formally 
matters of course, and we have stimulated a sensitiveness in the 
press which gives no rest to public officers who abuse their trusts 
as party spies. In Indiana we have relentlessly revealed the foul¬ 
ness of political management of public charitable institutions. In 
Maryland we have inexorably told the truth of the abandonment 
of the national public service to politics. In Massachusetts we 
have adjusted the reformed system to the selection of laborers. 
In New York we are seeking at Buffalo with the strong approval 


5 


of the most intelligent citizens of every party and church the in¬ 
troduction of the principle of reform into the selection of public 
teachers. 

I say that we have done this, not to arrogate to the League 
an exclusive action or interest, but in the sense of that wide-spread 
and essentially American conviction that party abuse of the civil 
service is an intolerable public wrong, and of the equally deter¬ 
mined and characteristic American resolution to correct it, of 
which the League is the organized representative. Meanwhile on 
every hand the indirect results of this movement are evident. 
The growing exclusion of mere partisan sympathy from the selec¬ 
tion of Judges; the universal and increasing disposition to sepa¬ 
rate municipal administration from party politics; the wise and 
well-sustained efforts to reform ballot and election laws in the 
interest of honesty; laws for which the conclusive arguments are 
the character and purposes of those who oppose them; the indig¬ 
nation and disgust with which the public learns that the costliest 
public works, like the construction of the new aqueduct to supply 
the city of New York, are made subjects of deals and intrigues for 
the profit of politicians and their confederates, and the consequent 
determination that so far as practicable the devil that defiles such 
undertakings shall be cast out,—these are all fruits of the intelli¬ 
gent and patriotic public spirit which is evoked by the movement 
for Civil Service Reform. Whoever supposes that its course is 
checked or its success endangered because the President writes a 
letter to influence a local election, or because post-offices are still 
treated as party booty, would despair of flood tide because every 
successive wave is not higher than its predecessor and lose all 
hope of coming mid-summer because there are chilly days in May. 


i6 


There are two important measures yet to be* adopted: first, 
the repeal of the four years law, a law which enables a complete 
partisan change of the service to be made in a way which permits 
the executive to escape, as in such a case he ought not to escape, 
the odium of arbitrary removals. This repeal we have constantly 
and warmly urged. The other practical measure which seems to 
me of even greater importance but which the League has not yet 
advocated, is an amendment to the Constitution extending some¬ 
what the term of the Presidency and making the President ineligi¬ 
ble for a second term. The wisest of our foreign political critics, 
De Tocqueville, who was here fifty-six years ago when the great 
partisan abuse of patronage in the national Government was but 
beginning, said with characteristic acuteness, that a candidate 
who is not the President, seeking the presidency, is but an indi¬ 
vidual, while the President seeking re-election is the state itself 
intriguing and corrupting with its immense resources. My ac¬ 
complished colleague upon the first Civil Service Commission, 
Mr. Joseph Medill, of Chicago, signed the report of the Commis¬ 
sion to President Grant, but he also submitted a supplementary 
report in which he urged with great force that a constitutional 
amendment prohibiting a second term is a preliminary measure 
without which an effective reform in the service is wholly imprac¬ 
ticable. 

The unwritten law which forbids a third term to any Presi¬ 
dent is founded in the reason which would prohibit a second 
term, and which great American statesmen have strongly stated, 
Jackson, who advised Monroe to be the President of the whole 
people and not of a party, but who, when he reached the White 
House, was the most absolute of party Presidents, twice urged 


17 


upon Congress the passage of an amendment limiting the Presi¬ 
dency to one term. Harrison pledged himself, as I have said, to 
a single term, but perished in a month under the fierce pressure 
for place. Henry Clay in 1842 declared such an amendment to 
be the principal object of the Whig party, and in 1844, the Whig 
Convention, which nominated him, resolved that it was insepar¬ 
able from the public honor and prosperity, and Webster gave it 
his approval and support. Charles Sumner introduced in the 
Senate an amendment providing for the ineligibility of the Presi¬ 
dent, and President Cleveland, in accepting the nomination four 
years ago, added his voice to the earlier warnings. He said : 
“ When we consider the patronage of this great office, the allure¬ 
ments of power, the temptation to retain public places once 
gained, and more than all, the availability a party finds in an in¬ 
cumbent whom a horde of office-holders with a zeal born of bene¬ 
fits received and fostered by the hope of favors yet to come, stand 
ready to aid with money and political service, we recognize in the 
eligibility of the President for re-election a most serious danger to 
that calm, deliberate and intelligent action which must character¬ 
ize a government of the people.” 

The tendency and temptation which in the mere prospect 
the President depicts in these decisive and accurate words, actual 
experience has doubtless proved to him to be stronger and more 
seductive than he imagined. The Secretary of the Treasury 
denies that the administration has abandoned reform and adds 
that the law has been rigidly enforced, its application extended 
and its spirit observed. But he would probably agree that if the 
constitution had made the President ineligible for re-election there 
would have been no reason for the assertion that reform had been 


i8 


abandoned, the application of the law would have been much 
more widely extended, and its spirit would have been so generally 
observed that no successor of the President would have dared to 
return to the old abuses, and the President himself would have 
happily identified his name with one of the most beneficent politi¬ 
cal reforms in our annals. Let us help the Presidents of the future 
in their tremendous struggle. Even Ulysses did not dare to pass 
the sirens without lashing himself to the mast and stopping the 
ears of his comrades against their song. Let us save Ulysses 
hereafter from the irresistible allurement by making it impossible 
for the sirens’ song to ensnare. The one term amendment is a 
measure, simple, practicable, intelligible, which would command, 
immediately, general and earnest support, and whose adoption 
would remove at once both the temptation and the danger which 
President Cleveland describes. It would emancipate every Presi¬ 
dent from the absolute despotism of party and from the temptation 
of personal motives, and leave him in the greatest of offices with 
no motive for official action but the wish to deserve the praise of 
history by promoting the welfare of his whole country. 

For the overwhelming partisan prostitution of the Civil Ser¬ 
vice with which we are familiar the only defence attempted is very 
simple. It is the assertion that the officers of the Government 
ought to be in harmony with the administration. This is true, 
but it is true only of such officers as are essential to carrying out 
its policy. The man would be laughed out of the country who 
should say seriously that under a free trade administration it is 
necessary to the proper operation of the Government that light¬ 
house keepers and Indian agents should be free traders, and that 
under a protection administration book-keepers and messengers 


9 


should favor a high tariff. The post-office is the chief patronage 
department of the Government, but there is no party method of 
sorting letters and the only politics of the railway mail service are 
honesty, quickness, accuracy and self-possession. Politics have 
no more to do with the business of the post-office than with the 
teaching of Greek in Columbia College. Post-offices have be¬ 
come the local centres of public politics because they have been 
treated as party prizes and not as public trusts; because postmas¬ 
ters have been taught that they are the agents of a party, not the 
servants of the people; and because political officers have been 
permitted unrebuked to suborn them as spies upon their neigh¬ 
bors. 

There is no more reason in requiring a postmaster to agree 'X 
with the President of the United States in political opinion than 
in requiring a railway engineer to agree with the religious views 
of the president of the road. The post-office was established for 
public convenience. It is the duty of the President to call into 
the postal service only persons who are fit for it in ability and 
character, and so long as they are efficient and faithful it is his 
duty in the public interest to retain them and a gross public 
wrong to remove them for political opinion. If their conduct 
toward the officer in whom the law vests their appointment is 
scandalous and unseemly they should be peremptorily dismissed, 
as unseemly conduct toward all appointing authorities is punished 
by dismissal; and if such dismissal should be said to abridge the 
political rights of American citizens, American citizens are quite 
sensible enough to know that unseemly conduct which they 
would not tolerate in their own private service should not be tol¬ 
erated in the public service. But this is wholly different from 


20 


dismissal for political opinion from posts which are in no sense 
political. Such removals Madison declared would justify im¬ 
peachment. And only because with all the great constitutional 
authority of his word he declared such removal to be an impeach¬ 
able otfense, and because Washington was President, by whom 
such abuse of authority was inconceivable, was the power of re¬ 
moval given by Congress to the President. But if before the evil 
day that we have seen, Madison thought such arbitrary removals 
impeachable misconduct, what would he have said had he seen 
the whole non-political public service trampled and scoured by 
the bloodhounds of all parties in turn, making prey of official 
fidelity, efficiency, and experience, and baying that such ravages 
are essentially American ? 

Unquestionably all officers of the Government whose duties 
are concerned with giving effect to the policy which the country 
has approved and whose offices bring them into personal and con¬ 
fidential relations with the heads of the Government, should be in 
entire sympathy and accord with those to whom the people have 
entrusted the conduct ot the administration. But the great mass 
of officers and employees of the Civil Service are not of that kind, 
and they can be disturbed for political and party reasons only to 
the great detriment of the public welfare. An election which 
changes the public policy in ministerial management of the post- 
office, for instance, never changes, and the proposition to effect a 
political change of postmasters is merely a naked and monstrous 
scheme to transform a vital and universally diffused public con¬ 
venience into a national electioneering agency for a party. 

Driven from the utterly untenable position that the great 
body of tlie service is essentially political and therefore that after 


21 


every election there should be a partisan clean sweep to harmon¬ 
ize with the administration, the advocates of the evil system are 
forced into the last ditch, the assertion that parties are indispens¬ 
able in a republic, and that the spoils system is essential to 
efficient party organization. This is merely an attempt to support 
an absurdity upon a falsehood. I'he falsehood is established by 
the experience of England. Nowhere is party feeling stronger, 
party purpose more definite, party organization more absolute and 
complete, and nowhere are party contests more strenuous and un¬ 
compromising, than in England. Yet Mr. Gladstone, the greatest 
of living party leaders of the English speaking race, says that it is 
impossible to understand why in America we permit the whole 
civil service to be disturbed by a Presidential election, and adds 
that in England a change of administration involves but the 
removal of a few score of persons. He is a sorry American who 
insists that young America is incapable of a practical national 
wisdom which old England displays. 

But the assertion is false again because of the notorious fact 
that the apprehension of the disastrous consequences of the uni¬ 
versal disturbance of the whole Civil Service every four years 
necessarily perplexes the election. If it be known, for instance, 
that the consequences of a successful vote for protection or tariff 
reform will be a general dismissal of all experienced and capable 
officers in the public service, that fact itself alarming the public 
mind will determine thousands of conservative votes, and just in 
that degree it prevents a vote upon the simple party issue. So 
long as the vast system of the public service with its enormous 
emoluments is treated as spoils, no great public question will be 
decided upon its merits. Again, party action in its true sense is 


22 


impossible until the spoils system is abolished, for when party be¬ 
comes a conspiracy for spoils our politics, instead of true party 
politics, become necessarily personal politics. In that condition 
it is useless to insist that we must vote for principles and not for 
men, because then what are called principles are merely pretexts 
for turning out a hundred thousand men and turning in as many 
more. If party managers wish to induce the people to support 
principles and not men there are two ways of doing it; one is to 
nominate candidates who are personally and officially beyond just 
reproach, and the other is to convince us that it is the policy of 
the Government and not tlie great many of civil officers that will 
be changed. Then the mind of the voter is fixed upon principles 
and not upon men. But so long as an election means for the 
successful party a general sack of the civil service, like that of a 
long besieged and captured city, then it is the plunder, and the 
men who will give it and get it, not principle or national policy, 
which will be the supreme and absorbing motive of the election. 

But these conclusive facts are but part of the argument. 
The consideration that should move most profoundly every 
worthy American is that the constant, watchful, deadly enemy of 
Republican Government from the beginning has been party 
spirit, and that in a country necessarily governed by party the 
highest interests of liberty imperatively demand the strict and ten¬ 
acious limitation of party to its rightful sphere. In a Democratic 
Republic, where the majority of voters is sovereign, the vital 
question for liberty is that of the ability of the voters to restrain 
themselves. Constitutional liberty is not only liberty regulated 
by law, it is also law sustained by the moral disposition of the in¬ 
dividual citizen. It lies in the ability of masses of men to control 


23 


their own passions. The exigencies and tests of liberty in this 
country have been many and great, but a more crucial hour the 
country never saw than that of the contested election of 1876. 
Constitution, law, and precedent, were all obscured. Party was 
arrayed angrily against party, and the peaceful continuance of the 
Government itself was involved. It was a strain along the very 
fibre of the American people and by the grace of God it did not 
give. Party spirit yielded to patriotic instinct and the great vic¬ 
tory of popular Government was won. In that supreme hour 
who was the traitor to liberty, to Republican Government, to 
America ? It was any man who vociferated that party discipline 
must be maintained, and that every man must stand by his party, 
because only by party could the Government be carried on. 
Happily the cry was vain. The crisis was beyond party, and 
only because the people for that high hour rose superior to party 
was the Government maintained and the country saved. 

The well-meaning and eloquent orators who rebuke political 
independence by declaring that we can achieve great results only 
by party, which is a fact that nobody denies, forget that party 
spirit is the one fire that needs no fanning. The first duty of 
patriotism is to keep that fire low. The natural tendency of 
party is to magnify and extend its sway, to identify itself with 
the country, and to seek its own power and aggrandize¬ 
ment. Party spirit instinctively sophisticates the individual 
conscience and divides the whole country into two hostile camps, 
whose soldiers hold each other to be practically traitors to the 
common welfare. Within a month I read with pain some words 
of an old political and personal friend in Congress whose unflinch* 
ing courage by my side in a moment of great personal peril in the 


24 


fiery crisis of the old anti-slavery agitation, I shall always grate¬ 
fully remember. During the recent tariff debate in the House of 
Representatives an earnest tariff reformer s])oke of Mr. Lowell as 
a distinguished diplomatist under the late Republican administra¬ 
tion, and instantly my friend exclaimed : “ Benedict Arnold was a 
Major-General in the Continental Army.’’ Benedict Arnold held 
the military commission of his country, and in the darkest hour of 
the revolution sought to betray to the enemy for a reward an 
important military post confided to his honorable care. There is 
no blacker crime. What is the crime of Mr. Lowell ? He differs 
from my friend and from part of the party with which he formerly 
acted, upon the best method of reducing the surplus in the 
Treasury, and he has highly praised the President to whom my 
friend is politically opposed. For these reasons my friend, pub¬ 
licly, in the national capitol, couples the name of one of the 
noblest living Americans, of lofty genius and character, one of the 
most spotless of citizens, one of the most upright of men, with the 
most infamous name in American history. The Latin poet says 
that anger is a brief madness. Party spirit is a frenzy which im- 
brutes the soul. Here is an honorable public servant, a kindly 
gentleman, an honest man, and party spirit forces from his lips a 
taunt regarding another gentleman not less honest, honorable, and 
kindly, which it is impossible that he believes. Do the orators, 
who perpetually remind us that nothing can be done without party 
as if we doubted it, really think that fact to be a reason constantly 
to inflame to fury the spirit of party ? Is there an intelligent 
American who does not see that, under the pretence of maintain- 
mg party organization, to abandon the whole Civil Service in 
every branch, and to a successful party is to fan a conflagration 
with a gale ? 


25 


“ In Governments of a monarchical cast patriotism may look 
with indulgence, if not with favor, upon the spirit of party. But 
in those of the popular character, in Governments purely elective 
it is a spirit not to be encouraged. From their natural tendency 
it is certain there will be always enough of that spirit for every 
salutary purpose. And there being constantly danger ot excess, 
the effort ought to be by force of public opinion to mitigate and 
assuage it. A fire not to be quenched, it demands a uniform 
vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest instead of warm¬ 
ing it should consume.” The words are not mine. They are 
those of the greatest American, of the man so pure and wise that 
affectionate veneration has canonized him; of the patriot who 
happier than Moses, not only led us through the Red sea but into 
the promised land and showed us how to make it Beulah. They 
are the words of Washington. The great national conventions 
about to assemble to nominate his successor in the Presidency, 
may wisely ponder, not only the character of the man and the 
principles and spirit of his administration, but the reason of his 
permanent hold upon the love and pride of the American people. 
That reason is their profound belief not only in the wisdom and 
sincerity of his views, but in his unbending official fidelity to his 
convictions. It is the certainty that no consideration of party, no 
allurement of personal ambition, no blandishment of flattery or 
sophistry, no fear of popular disfavor, or dictation of imperious 
politicians, could have moved him from the course that his con¬ 
victions and conscience had prescribed, or have persuaded him to 
degrade the public service into party plunder. 

Those conventions, also, may well heed the memory of that 
host of heroes whose graves to-morrow will be strewn with flowers. 


26 


In no country was there ever a more beautiful benediction upon 
patriotism or a more touching tribute of national gratitude. The 
eloquence of Pericles has embalmed the Peloponnessian dead, but 
the affection of America consecrates the memory of our boys in 
blue. It was country, not party; it was duty, not ambition; it 
was liberty, and union the impregnable bulwark of liberty, for 
which they made the costly sacrifice. They were patriots to 
whom America meant not only nationality, and justice, and 
equality, and obedience to law, but also political progress, the 
righting of public wrongs, the ability of the people to see their 
own errors and constantly to strengthen by purifying their own 
government. They died to serve these great ends. Let us live 
to serve them. As we scatter flowers upon their graves let us 
baptize ourselves in their spirit, and with their abiding faith in the 
people, seeing everywhere the signs that the America of their hope 
shall be the America of our children, let us say with Samuel 
Adams, when he heard the shots at Lexington, and knew that the 
revolution had begun, “ Oh what a glorious morning!” 


27 


RESOLUTIONS 

PASSED BY THE LEAGUE ON THE SECOND DAY OF ITS MEETING, 
MAY 30, 1888. 


The League congratulates the country upon the general and 
profound interest in the reform of the civil service which has been 
awakened by the agitation of the question. Founded upon the 
soundest principles of efficient administration, congenial to the 
American instinct of fair play and equal rights, representing the 
earnest conviction and desire of the most patriotic citizens, the 
League is deeply encouraged by the progress and the prospects of 
the cause and pledges itself to still more strenuous exertions, in 
perfect confidence of ultimate triumph. 

The National Civil-Service Reform League acknowledges 
that the scope of the classified service has been somewhat en¬ 
larged and that the rules and regulations have been revised and 
improved. But in many instances the forms of the Civil-Service 
Reform law have been so abused by appointees of the administra¬ 
tion who are not in sympathy with reform as to bring about wide¬ 
spread distrust in reform methods. No law can be efficiently en¬ 
forced by officials who are not in sympathy with its objects and 
aim to evade its requirements and one of the most important 
duties of an administration is to remove such officials. The 
League reaffirms its declaration of last year that the change in the 
unclassified service is so great as to forecast its practically com¬ 
plete partisan reconstruction by the close of the administration. 
It regards this fact as the loss of a great opportunity by the Presi¬ 
dent, and as a serious public misfortune. Neither the welfare of 
the service nor any public advantage whatever has been shown to 



28 


demand so general a change and it can be attributed only to a 
partisan pressure for wholly partisan objects which the President 
has unfortunately not resisted. These general partisan changes in 
the unclassified service, the disregard of the notorious and flagrant 
defiance of the executive circular of July 14th, 1886, warning cer¬ 
tain officers of the government against pernicious activity in 
politics, and the President’s letter of November 2d, 1887, advo¬ 
cating the choice of a particular candidate in a municipal election, 
seriously discredit the cause of reform, and merit the public con¬ 
demnation which they have received. But the League submits 
to the country that the force and character of that condemnation 
and the severe standard of executive conduct in regard to the 
civil service by which the administration is judged, are the strong¬ 
est evidences of an earnest public demand for the overthrow of 
the spoils system and justly encourage the League and all friends 
of reform in rene^ved and hopeful activity to secure radical and 
thorough reform. 

The activity of parties in the maintenance of party principles 
is commendable. But the endeavor to promote the success 
of a party in elections, or the success of a faction in con¬ 
ventions by enlisting the activity of persons holding public office, 
and therefore charged with public trust, is a perversion of the true 
function of a party, and tends inevitably, as all experience shows, 
to defeat the true object of political discussion, and to convert 
parties into machines, intended solely to promote the personal in¬ 
terests of their managers. 

The laws which limit the tenure of inferior officers to four 
years and which are a prolific source of intrigue and corruption, 
should be repealed, that honesty, competency, and efficiency may 
be the sole condition of employment in the public service. An 
office-holding class, and a permanent tenure are practically impos¬ 
sible so long as the power of removal remains unimpaired. 

The League reiterates its declaration of the desirability of an 
enlargement of the classified service as heretofore recommended. 


29 


and especially an application of the rules to the Indian Depart¬ 
ment in which, according to the reports of the Indian Rights As¬ 
sociation, based upon personal and unprejudiced observation, the 
familiar political abuse of the service runs riot to the disgrace of 
the American name. 


The League earnestly recommends to its constituent associa¬ 
tions : 

1. That the associations in those states in which no civil 
service law has been adopted exert themselves to the utmost to 
promote the passage of laws establishing the merit system of ap¬ 
pointments to office in the penal, reformatory, charitable and edu¬ 
cational institutions and principal cities in the respective states in 
which such associations are organized. 

2. That the associations in those states in which civil 
service laws have been enacted watch vigilantly over the manner 
in which those laws are enforced, and guard against any alteration 
which shall impair their efficiency. 

3. That the associations continue the practice of interrogat¬ 
ing candidates for office as to their views respecting the merit sys¬ 
tem of appointment, and their willingness to aid in the enforce¬ 
ment of existing laws respecting the same, or in the enactment of 
laws which shall extend the operation of that system and render 
it most effective. 

The following were also adopted: 

“ Public officers entrusted with power of appointment and 
removal should be required by law or executive order, to place 
upon public record all appointments, removals and resignations, 
and the reason for every removal made by them: and appointing 
officers, when in their discretion they do not select those rated 



30 


highest upon the eligible list presented to them, should be re¬ 
quired in each case to file their reasons for such action.” 


^‘■Resolved, that, while we fully recognize that the absolute 
power of removal must be vested in the appointing power subject 
only to a sound discretion, the system of making removals upon 
secret charges or specified acts preferred by unknown accusers, 
without opportunity for explanation or denial, is inquisitorial in its 
character, unjust in its results, and, like the spoils system itself, 
repugnant to the spirit of American institutions.” 



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•i1 




Ptihlications of the Neiv York Civil-Service Reform Ass^n, 


Daniel Webster and the Spoils System. An extract from Senator 
Bayard’s oration at Dartmouth College, June, 1882. Per copy, 3 cts. 
Per 100, . . . . . . , 50 

The “Pendleton Bill.” Bill to Regulate and Improve the Civil Service 
of the United States, as approved. Per copy, 3 cts. Per 100, $i 50 

What has been done in New York and may be done elsewhere. 

Per copy, i ct. Per 100, - - - - 30 cts. 

The Reform of the Civil Service. Per copy, i ct. Per 100 , 30 cts. 

What is the Civil Service? (Card for distribution). 


Annual Report of the C.-S. R. A. of N, Y., May, 1883. Per copy, 3 cts. 


The same for 1885. Per copy, .... 3 cts. 

The same for 1886. Per copy, ... - ^ cts. 

The same for 1887. Per copy. - - - _ 3 cts. 

The same for 1888. Per copy, - - - - - 3 cts. 

Hon. Augustus Schoonmaker upon the Merit System. 


The Workingmens’ Interest in Civil Service Reform. Address by 
Hon. Henry A. Richmond. 

Constitution and By-Laws of New York Association. 

Also a few copies of some early publications. 


MISCELLANEOUS. 

Civil Service in Great Britain. By Dorman B. Eaton. Per copy, 25 cts. 

The Competitive Test. By Edward M. Shepard, Per copy, - 5 cts. 

The Meaning of Civil-Service Reform. By Edward O. Graves, 
Per copy, - - - - - - - 3 cts. 

Civil-Service Examinations. Being question papers with actual an¬ 
swers of successful and unsuccessful candidates. By R. R. Bowker. 
Per copy, - - - - - - - 12 cts 

Report of the U. S. Civil-Service Commission, 1884. 

The same for 1886. 

Report of the N. Y. Civil-Service Commission, 1334. 

The same for 1885- 
The same for 1886. 

The same for 1887. 


Also a tew other miscellaneous publications. 

Orders for the publications will be filled by William Potts, Secretary, 
33 & 35 Liberty St., New York, or by G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 27 and 29 
West 23d St., New York. 




PRESIDENT. 


LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 


0 028 070 942 6 


GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 


SECRETARY. 

WILLIAM POTTS. 


TREASURER. 

IRA BURSLEY. 


EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE. 


WM. A. AIKEN, 

CHARLES J. BONAPARTE, 

SILAS W. BURT, 

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS, 
JOHN JAY, 

A. R. MACDONOUGH, 

W. W. MONTGOMERY, 

MORRILL 


SHERMAN S. ROGERS, 
WILLIAM CARY SANGER, 
CARL SCHURZ, 

EDWARD M. SHEPARD, 
MOORFIELD STOREY, 
EVERETT P. WHEELER, 
FREDERIC W. WHITRIDGE, 

, JR. 


The formation of local Associations in every locality 
where a nucleus can be found is much to be desired, and 
the League will be glad to assist any movement in that 
direction. Each Association, when formed, should estab¬ 
lish an official connection with the National League. The 
details of the organization having been furnished to the 
Executive Committee through the Secretary, that Com¬ 
mittee is authorized to admit the association to member¬ 
ship in the League, whereupon it is entitled to elect a 
member of the General Committee and a representative 
Vice-President. The Secretary should thereafter be kept 
informed of the progress of the work, and of changes of 
officers as they may occur. 

Address 

The National Civil-Service Reform League^ 

NOS. 33 AND 35 LIBERTY ST., NEW YORK. 




